1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is that of airport navigation of aircraft and more precisely that of the safety zones surrounding a machine either in its immediate environment or in its environment in the near future.
2. Description of the Prior Art
During phases when an aircraft is taxiing around an airport, to avoid any incident or collision with another aircraft, it is important that the crew have a perfect knowledge of the environment of their machine. For this purpose, the system of cockpit viewing units presents them with the situation of the surrounding traffic. The position of each aircraft can be recovered by virtue of the information provided by systems of ADS-B type signifying “Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast”. This presentation can be done in various ways.
By way of first example, it can be ensured in the so-called “HUC” head-up collimator of the machine. The most intuitive way of symbolizing the various other aircraft situated in the immediate environment of the machine is to represent them in a view compliant and/or non-compliant with their exact location. U.S. Pat. No. 7,342,514 entitled “Display of Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS-B) on Head-Up Display” illustrates this type of representation. Reference will be made in particular to FIGS. 1 to 5 of this patent.
By way of second example, it is possible to represent in a so-called Head-Down viewing unit an aerial view of the airport zone in which the machine is situated. U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,342 entitled “Navigational instrument, method and computer program product for displaying ground traffic information” illustrates this type of representation. Reference will be made in particular to FIG. 3 of this patent.
These various approaches afford information by way of indication allowing the crew to remain vigilant. In certain situations, this information does not make it possible to monitor sufficiently precisely the behaviour of dangerous aeroplanes and therefore to comply scrupulously with the regulatory separation distances imposed on aeroplanes and vehicles at an airport.
Now, a certain number of ground collisions are due to poor assessment of the precise crowding of aeroplanes on runways. A pilot may, for example, decide to take off thinking that the runway is clear while an aeroplane still has part of its fuselage on the runway or else too close to the latter.